Android Tablets and Smartphones to Steal the Show at CES

Fortune said 2011 will be the year Google's Android operating system
"explodes" across the technosphere on smartphones, tablet computers
and other devices hardware manufacturers cook up.

Time for a level set: "Explodes," or some variation thereof, is
the dramatic euphemism people in the technology industry employ to proclaim
that a product is set for some super definitive growth. In this case, it's the
kind that blows RIM's BlackBerry and Apple's iOS smartphone platforms out of
the water.

Android fans will wince at the too-common use of the expression
"Android explodes." This is because it may be turned for mischievous
purposes to describe what an Android phone does when a user holds it up to his ear
or what an Android tablet does when a user swipes it with her fingers.

So "explodes" may be a tad rich a description, but if there is any
event that could signal that Android is ripe for hyper growth (Fortune
apparently doesn't see Android's rise to 23.5 percent of U.S. smartphone share in 2010 as
"explosion" worthy), it's the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. The
annual event commences in earnest Jan. 5 in Las Vegas.

eWEEK's Clint Boulton and Nicholas Kolakowski will be attending. Here is a
preview of a handful of Android-related announcements the reporters expect to
hear and see.